We take aviation so much for granted that it is hard to imagine life before airplanes appeared on the scene. A century ago, two events took place in Alaska that help illustrate just how profound some of those differences really are.
Pre-Airplane
On March 13, 1913 three men in heavily loaded dog sleds departed from Fairbanks, intent on climbing Mt. McKinley. After mushing down the Tanana River to Nenana, the party grew in size to six, and continued the 170 mile trip to the gold mining community at Kantishna. They backhauled supplies pre-positioned the previous fall by riverboat, and advanced toward the Muldrow Glacier, on the north side of the mountain. On April 9th the group arrived at what would be their base camp, just short of the glacier. Unlike modern climbers, the party took several days to collect firewood (a source of fuel for heating and cooking) and to hunt caribou and sheep. The game meat was cooked and mixed with butter, salt and pepper to make pemmican, shaped into “two-hundred baseball sized orbs” and allowed to freeze. This locally manufactured food, along with rice and bread, would provide much of the energy needed by the four members of the team that would attempt the summit.
These details, and much more, are recounted in Tom Walker’s new book, The Seventymile Kid. The story is an excellent read, that kept me on the edge of my seat, even though I am not normally a fan of mountain climbing stories. Along the way, I became fascinated with the logistics and modes of travel used getting to, and retreating from the mountain. From the descriptions in Walker’s book, and a little research on the side, I decided to try mapping the route with the help of Google Earth. The journey started the fall before when Harry Karstens (the Seventymile Kid), hauled 4,500 pounds of supplies from Fairbanks by riverboat to as close as he could get, just before rivers froze up for the season.
I won’t spoil the story of the climb for you, but will say that none of the expedition members were seasoned mountain climbers, and they faced a number of predicaments that required every bit of pioneering skill, creativity and stamina they could muster. Following the climb, the team came off the mountain on June 9th. By this time, snow had melted and the party walked about 60 miles to a boat that had been stashed the year before. They floated about 300 miles to Tanana, on the Yukon River, where “commercial” transportation (steam powered riverboats) was available. It wasn’t until early July that Karstens made it back to his home in Fairbanks.
Map of the routes traveled by foot, snow shoe, boat and dog sled to accomplish the 1913 ascent of Mt. McKinley. Use link in text to access map directly.
Google Earth’s distance measuring tools revealed that the party had traveled about 966 by boat; almost 100 miles on foot (hiked, snow shoed or climbed); and over 400 miles by dogsled. By these calculations, that added up to 1,468 miles traveled to conquer Mt. McKinley the first time! And these are just the round-trip distances, with no allowances for the relaying of gear cached on the river, or the numerous shuttles during the climb itself. This map is online if you wish to examine the route in more detail.
Post Airplane
Visitors inspect the Base Camp at about the 7,000 foot level of the Kahiltna Glacier, where most modern climbers are transported by airplane to start their journey up Mt. McKinley (Denali).
Today, almost 1,200 climbers a year attempt to scale Mt. McKinley. The lion’s share of these depart from the town of Talkeetna, on the south side of the mountain, in a wheel-ski equipped airplane. They make the sixty mile trip in about half an hour, arriving at “Base Camp” on the Kahiltna Glacier—already a third of the way up the mountain, elevation wise. The climb is nominally a two week trip before being flown off the mountain. A little different from the three month duration of the Karsten-Stuck Expedition, that started in Fairbanks a hundred years ago. While many things have changed during that century, the airplane is perhaps most responsible for shortening that trip.
I mentioned that there were two events that year. About the time Karstens was returning to Fairbanks, James and Lily Martin were in town, and between July 3rd and 5th made the first powered airplane flights in Alaska in a 60 horsepower Gage-Martin biplane. As we approach the centennial of that occasion, events are scheduled to recognize that milestone in Alaskan aviation history. Stay tuned for more on this historic milestone!
Post Script:
A modern view looking up the Muldrow Glacier, taken June 1st. The descendents of the 1913 expedition plan to ascend the glacier on the way to the peaks, shrouded in cloud on the left.
To commemorate this expedition, the University of Alaska Museum of the North has created an exhibit, Denali Legacy, 100 Years on the Mountain, that documents the climb, contains the journals of the four men who scaled the mountain, and numerous artifacts of this historic effort. In addition, descendants of the climbing party plan to start a memorial climb on June 8th, following the original route up the Muldrow Glacier, but taking advantage of the road into the park–and a Park Service bus–to put them with hiking distance of the glacier. Fairbanks Daily News Miner columnist Dermot Cole provides an overview of the planned climb.
